1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process whereby site maintenance and repair information is captured on site at telecommunication industry installations as the repair or maintenance is performed and a closeout package for the work is created in near real time.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the telecommunication industry, a service technician generally is servicing equipment at installations that are remote from the office. A service-level agreement or SLA is an expectation, agreement or contract between a network operator and a services firm or company that specifies, usually in measurable terms, what services the network operator can expect and in what time frame.
The current practice is fundamentally a manual process of diagnosing, auditing, and remediating subsequent to which the technician may consume hours or days to complete a “close-out package” which is then transmitted to the network operator or customer. The technician goes through a manual process of, collecting, and assembling information in written form or on a PC and correlating photos with text based comments and remediation steps. Typically this information is then reviewed, edited, and/or corrected by another person who is usually a highly paid engineer.
One problem with the existing practice is that there is a significant delay in the creation of a closeout package. Current SLA's are up to 5 days.
Another problem with the existing practice is overall quality control of this process. Errors in correlating remediation steps, with textual descriptions and photographs are common and extremely costly to the network operators, both directly and in terms of delays.
Another problem with the existing practice is that closeout packages are routed via email. These are typically large documents that are slow to send.
Still a further problem with the existing practice is it is challenging to have a complete historical record of the site activity.
Further problems with the existing practice are created by generating the closeout package off-site from where the work was performed. This may involve discovering that the photos that were taken by the technician are out of focus or missing. This may then require the technician to make a return trip to the work site to take additional photos that fill in the gap created by the out of focus or missing photos in order to enable the closeout package to be completed.
Still a further problem with the existing practice is that the engineer that is reviewing the technician's photos and notes may have difficulty associating the correct photo with the item being worked on at the work site.
Another problem with the existing practice is that reports are inconsistent from one technician to another, the quality of reports are inconsistent and of lower quality.
Because the field technician who is performing the work on-site and the engineer or technician that is preparing the close out report are not communicating with each other in real time, more human intervention is needed. This leads to more errors, more frustration for the workers, and more redoing of work in order to complete the process.
A final problem with the existing practice is the engineers or technicians that are doing the post site work in order to “complete” the close out process based on the information provided by the field technicians are highly paid employees and due to confusing or incomplete information received from the field technicians, they are spending more time in closing out the work than is necessary, making the entire process expensive.
The present process addresses all of these problems by providing real time interaction and information transfer between the field technician and the off-site engineer or technician who will be able to complete the close out process in near real time. This process eliminates the need to revisit work sites to obtain additional photos, more effectively uses the time of engineers and technicians and allows the close out process to be made in near real time, thereby greatly shortening cycle time and reducing the overall cost of the process.